


Of Time's Uncertain Wing

by englishable



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 07:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4129857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Natasha gets a postcard after all. He’s rather predictable that way, not that she minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Time's Uncertain Wing

**Author's Note:**

> Something very small that I wrote just after watching "Age of Ultron." Fury's sarcasm about the whole thing amused me.

...

They present it to her inside a heavy-gauge polyethylene evidence bag, numbered and hermetically sealed and bearing a list of signatures to detail its chain of custody: which seems altogether like a stupid amount of unnecessary trouble, but then – as Natasha will acknowledge – a certain professionalized paranoia is endemic to the business.

Even if all that trouble is over a postcard.

“This arrived for you at fourteen hundred hours yesterday, Agent Romanoff.” A staff member holds the evidence bag forward at arm’s length, pinched between his thumb and forefinger as though it is the tail-end of a thread. “We apologize for the delay. Protocol generally dictates that any items received from unknown senders are to be incinerated, but it was suggested we make an exception.”

Natasha takes it from him with deliberate leisure and breaks the tamper-proof seal. 

On the postcard’s front is a glossy photograph: the ocean, at sunset, clouds overhead filling with shades of red-gold, light crossing over the water like a bridge. The word  _‘Nibula’_  is printed in bright letters along the bottom.

(The kind of cheap crap you might get at a tourist shop in Suva or Denarau, in other words – as if she’s never needed to pick up a phrase or two of Fijian before. What a predictable and irremediable dork.)

She turns it over.

It has been addressed in an economic, apologetically cramped font that she had already familiarized herself with months before she first met him. There is a deep crease through the card’s middle, another that suggests it was briefly folded into discreet fourths, but these seem to have been smoothed out again so that still it lays flat in her palm.

And there is no message: not that she expected any, of course. 

She has to fight down a laugh when she speaks.

“Well. All right then.” Natasha looks up at the staff member again. “If that’s what we’re running with for now.”

(Something that may be a smudged thumbprint, left behind because he has placed his hand over the penciled-in address and name, is also visible near the postcard’s bottom corner. 

She slides her own thumb briefly down to cover it.)

…


End file.
